From the Department of It’s Not Just Nine Year Old Children Who Are Revolting:
Ronan Lee, Queensland MLA for Indooroopilly (and anti-choice Catholic), has resigned from the ALP and joined the Socialist Alliance Greens. As justification, he cited his Gub’mint’s inaction on addressing climate change and other, pressing environmental issues. (The other matters he cited are renewable energy, public transport, wilderness protection and the Traveston Crossing Dam project.) Bob Brown apparently reckons there’s a lesson to be learned for Peter Garrett in Lee’s defection, but quite what that is, I’m not sure. Be nice to parrots? The Minister for the Yartz, Uranium Mining, Woodchipping, and Shit-Eating Grins:
has sidestepped pleas to halt plans to log southern Tasmania’s forests which would threaten the survival of one of Australia’s rarest parrots. Birds Australia, Australia’s biggest science-based conservation group, has called on Mr Garrett to take urgent action to stop woodchip logging from destroying food trees and nesting hollows in a key breeding area for the endangered swift parrot. The parrots, rarer than China’s giant panda or Borneo’s orang-utans, are listed by the World Conservation Union in its Red Book of globally endangered species. Fewer than 1000 pairs of swift parrots remain in the wild, and hundreds of the blossom-feeding birds have arrived in Wielangta’s tall eucalypt forest, flying in over Bass Strait from the mainland’s dry inland and coastal woodlands. It’s the longest migration route of any parrot species, and the birds are often seen in Canberra during their brief stopovers.
In the 2006 election, Ronan Lee gained 9,410 votes (40.46%), the Liberal candidate 9,868 votes (42.43%) and the Greens candidate 3,979 votes (17.11%). Meaning — I think — that Lee has some chance of holding the seat at the next state election if a sufficient number of preferences are directed his way…
See also : Indooroopilly Labor MP Ronan Lee joins Greens, Larvatus Prodeo, October 5, 2008 | Qld Labor MP joins the Greens, Crikey (Andrew Bartlett), October 5, 2008